Catch up on all of my And Just Like That recaps here
It’s season finale day!!! How exciting!!! I want you all to know that I hope this gets renewed even though I kind of hate it because I really do think this show has found its footing and the last two episodes were the best of the entire season, so a season two could be incredible. I also want you to know that I have made the executive decision to like Che, and to especially like Che and Miranda together, because otherwise this particular episode doesn’t hit, and if I pretend episodes 1-8 didn’t exist, then I do kind of like Che.
Now that we’ve gotten the disclaimers out of the way, like I said I enjoyed this episode and it’s time to get into the recap. I want to end with all of the Carrie drama, because that’s how we end it as an audience, so let’s start with Miranda.
Che invites Miranda to come to a club/bar/restaurant and meet their family. Miranda arrives and is immediately confused when it’s more bar/club than restaurant, but Che sits Miranda down next to their “abuelas” and runs up to the stage to launch into a musical rendition of a song that I’ve never heard but says the word “east coast” a lot. Why, you may ask? Che is going to LA! They got asked to film a pilot for a show, and since they only found out recently they didn’t have time to tell Miranda and so they’re going! And Miranda should come with them of course!
I feel like it is not only weird behavior to ask someone to come to LA with you when you refuse to even put a label on your relationship, but I think we have to embrace the fact that the show wants Che and Rock (more on that later) to be label averse people as a character trait. Apparently people who exist outside of the gender binary also exist outside of all labels binaries, according to AJLT. Regardless, the other weird behavior is not telling the person you’re in love with that you have a TV interview and decided to accept the offer until after you’ve already done it. It’s also weird to not seem to care that the person you love is giving up something they’re passionate about to follow you around, but knowing Miranda she probably didn’t even tell Che about the internship, so I won’t blame that on them.
Miranda makes the decision to go to LA without so much as telling Charlotte or Carrie, instead choosing to inform Nya that she’s taking the rest of the semester remote and cancelling her internship. Nya is understandably upset, both because she wrote Miranda a rec letter to get that job (which means Miranda is probably hurting all of Nya’s future applicants) and because Andre just left on a tour and she was hoping to hang out with Miranda while he was gone. Miranda’s other friends finally find out her plans at the they-mitzva. Carrie is understandably rattled and raises very valid concerns, but Miranda blows it all off as wanting to change. Wasn’t going back to school and switching careers a change that everyone supported you in Miranda?
In case you needed any more change from Miranda this season, she dyes her hair red right before heading off to LA.
Rock’s they-mitzva was going poorly even before Miranda’s proclamation. First off, Rock doesn’t know any of the Hebrew that they need to know in order to complete the ceremony. Second, a bunch of rabbis cancelled on them for “family emergencies”, but that one was solved by Charlotte finding a trans rabbi willing to complete the ceremony. Third, a fact that we only find out once we arrive at the they-mitzva (and Rock is dressed in their super awesome pink suit that honestly I want) that Rock does not want to become an adult in the Jewish faith. They don’t want to be labeled at all, not even as a New Yorker! Honestly I feel like this could have come up earlier, but that wouldn’t have made as good TV show drama, and it would also have taken away Charlotte’s opportunity to demonstrate how supportive she was being of her genderqueer child.
To save the day, Charlotte decides that she will be they-mitzva’d, which is honestly hilarious and resulted in a very cute family bonding scene. Anthony also had the chance to show how close he was to Charlotte’s family this episode when he became the bossy uncle giving Rock a pep talk and taking away their video game controller. Overall it was a great episode for the Goldenblatt family-extended.
Now let’s get into what you’ve all been waiting for, Carrie’s drama, which takes the vast majority of this episode.
Carrie finally goes on that date with her hot teacher boy. It honestly seems like the date went well, and at the end he asks if he can kiss her, and they do, although I must say it was a very awkward kiss. Carrie goes inside and calls Seema, who is FINALLY hooking up with the hot doorman. Apparently they’ve been in a hotel room for 3 days hooking up, and I honestly love that for her. Carrie tells her that she feels like there was no magic, and him asking for the kiss “isn’t like she remembers”.
I must say this is my least favorite part of the episode. A show like And Just Like That has a moral responsibility to speak positively of consent just as much as it has a moral responsibility to show diverse storylines. By Carrie saying that her boy asking for a kiss took the magic out of it, that’s going to influence other people to just make moves without asking. Consent can be sexy! And AJLT could make it sexy if they wanted to, or they could have made the kiss awkward in ways that had nothing to do with asking for consent, but they took neither of these routes!
This episode was all about closure for Carrie. She believes that she’s being haunted by Big for kissing Hot Teacher, all because her reading lamp starts flashing. When she takes it to the shop, they find a wire that was broken, meaning that it wasn’t Big at all it was just a broken light. The saga continues when she meets Big’s brother for lunch and he tells her that there’s space to take Big off her her shelf and into the family crypt, if she so chooses. This prompts some deep introspection by Carrie, and she ends up deciding to dump Big off of the bridge in Paris.
She invites Charlotte and Miranda to go with her, but Miranda chooses to go to Che’s pilot filming instead, and so Carrie cancels on Charlotte and goes herself. She dumps Big off the bridge in a magical pink dress and it’s all very cute, becoming more so when she texts Samantha to get drinks and Samantha agrees. We know that Kit Cattrall is never coming back to this show, so I don’t know what the long term plan is here, but I am glad they weren’t writing her off as a terrible friend forever because Samantha is not a horrible friend!
Che had to ditch her podcast* to go to LA, but luckily for Carrie the producer offers to produce a Carrie only SATC podcast, and she agrees. It seems like he’s into more than just her podcasting, though, because after the first episode they step into the elevator, and all of a sudden they’re making out! No consent needed here! Just a classic boss-worker relationship where the worker is hired because the boss thinks she’s hot and wants to hook up with her, and then takes his first opportunity to do so (to be clear i think there was clear sexual tension and I kind of like this relationship, but the point still stands). And just like that, we’re back in 2000 Sex and the City!
*apparently this podcast takes live callers, which means it’s actually a radio show- just thought that should be noted
I’m honestly pretty sad this season is over because I’ve been enjoying recapping, so let me know in the comments what you thought of this season and what shows you want me to recap next!
Write Through the Night 